Nick Lutsko blew up in the fall of 2020 with his unauthorized theme for Spirit Halloween. The hilarious song was such an immediate viral sensation the seasonal store quickly hired him to write a second official one. What followed in the years since was much more than just a Spirit Halloween trilogy. The King of the spooky season went on to create an entire Nick Lutsko Expanded Universe. Lutsko’s absurd, surreal world consisted of connected characters and long-running bits. They’d crossover in his ridiculous songs (and their equally ridiculous music videos) on social media and with both taped and lived productions. He’s also done everything else. He’s produced his own live variety shows (including Saturday Nick Live, aka SNL). He starred in his own Gremlins 3 short film. And he’s also headlined entire weekends of concerts and experiences.
But no matter how many hats he’s worn, the one thing that has remained consistent since Nick Lutsko’s Spirit Halloween song became a beloved comedy classic has been the humor behind his work.
Until now.
THE WORLD PREMIERE OF THE “RESET” MUSIC VIDEO BY NICK LUTSKO
During a lengthy break from social media and years of constantly creating new content, Lutsko wrote Ends. The fantastic record is his first non-comedy album since 2019’s Swords. While his loyal Patreon followers can already listen to all of it, he’s been releasing a new song and accompanying music video every month since December. Now he’s debuting his fourth release, “Reset,” and Nerdist has your exclusive first look at the video. It’s a labor of love for more than just Nick Lutsko. It’s also an ode to the kind of fanbase he has created. It features the work of more than 20 animators, all of whom reached out to him. (You can find a full list of them below.)
How did Nick Lutsko get so many people to work on this one video? And how does it reflect the challenges he’s faced as both an artist and online personality? Years after I first spoke to him about writing silly songs about skeletons chasing him out of a store, I got to ask him about getting serious with “Reset” and Ends. We also talked about the ideas and themes behind the album, why he needed to record non-comedy music after years of being funny, what it’s like for an artist who got famous on Twitter to navigate the broken social media landscape of 2025, and how becoming a dad at the same time he became famous has influenced more than just his music.
Nerdist: I’m going to ask the question that I think some fans who only know you from your comedic music are going to be asking themselves when they listen to “Reset” and Ends: Are you okay?
Nick Lutsko: :laughs: Yeah. Yeah, I’m great. What’s funny is I feel like this record is quite a bit more optimistic than the previous record of non-com songs, Swords. But I definitely can empathize and understand how someone coming from just the comedy stuff to this can get a major sense of like, “Wait, what am I listening to and who is this?” But yeah, I’m fine.
Even with Songs on the Computer, maybe not so much the Halloween stuff, which is more fun and games, there’s very much an underbelly of discontent with the status quo. That’s just been a constant throughline with most of my work.
You say this album is hopeful, but you are working through something with these songs. This is your own synopsis for this new video: “Reset” explores the push-pull of creation, the potential of triumph and pressure to change.” In the video, you are literally chased by your own creations, and this is a theme that runs throughout Ends. It’s this idea that you’ve had the success, but you can’t really rest on your laurels, so you are working through something here.
Lutsko: Totally. Yeah, I think that’s fair. And it’s funny because it’s an interesting record in general because I do feel like there are these two threads that are moving simultaneously. There is this dissatisfaction with the rat race of becoming an online content creator and not feeling fulfilled or satisfied. But I want to be clear, too. There’s a difference between the work and the art and then the process in which you present that to people. And I think with “Reset” in particular, and also “Run,” a single I released a couple months ago, there’s this feeling of you’re constantly chasing something that you can’t ever really obtain. And therefore, you can never really feel comfortable or satisfied where you’re at.
What I mean by that is I have experienced pretty high highs, but even then, it’s like, “I got to take it further, and I got to put something else out.” It’s like this quest that can’t be satiated. I hit a wall toward the end of 2023, but I began my career releasing sincere, earnest music before I kind of accidentally fell into more comedic stuff. And the more success I had with the comedic stuff, the more and more time went by where I was kind of neglecting this other part of my creative self.
I’ve been insanely lucky in that the comedic stuff introduced people to my past work, and I was getting more and more people saying, “Please do another record of this other stuff.” After a couple of years of going really, really hard on the comedy stuff, I decided to go offline to stop the constant race against time and the constant pressure to put things out. I was just going to write an album about exactly where I’m at. And because that is where I started, it’s no surprise that a lot of these songs are about my dissatisfaction with that whole process.
But the other thread in this album is becoming a new dad. So there’s kind of like, “Here’s all these things that are driving me crazy, but look at this love,” is the answer to the problem. And that’s where I say the optimism comes from. Even with “Reset” and a lot of these songs, if they start in a place of… I keep using the word discontent or dissatisfaction….there’s a lot of times that there’s another side.
Well, the album starts with your title track, “Ends,” and the song opens with the lyrics, “Here I stand/At the dawn of all creation/Carving words into sand/Leaving records/For some future civilization/About things I don’t understand.” That’s why I think some people are going to hear some of this, especially those who only know you from your comedic songs and be like, “Hey is the funny guy okay?” But like you said, by the end of this album it does feel like you’re okay. So how did working on non-comedic music help you get to that point where you said you were a little discontent, but now you’re in a good, happy place?
Lutsko: I hope the “Reset” video, in particular, kind of drives this home, but in that video, as you said, you see me being chased by past creations, and I’m constantly resetting. And obviously, there’s this pressure of, “Okay, that didn’t work. I need to throw something else at the wall. I’m going to try something else. Okay that was a flop, so reset, try this. Oh, that was insanely successful, but how am I going to top that? Okay, I could try this.” So even at the highest highs and the lowest lows, it’s just the same thing. You get to where you’re trying to get to, and you want to get back to where you were.
That’s a constant for me, even in the mundane aspects of my life. But by the end of that song I tried to showcase this constant of my life. My dad played guitar growing up and I was deeply interested in music as an extremely young child. I had a guitar birthday cake when I was five. (Note: you can see both his dad, who he somehow doesn’t realize he looks exactly like, and that cake in the video.) This is a reminder that I do this because I love it, and this is my superpower.
That’s the other end of the coin. As much as I hate the rat race and chasing the dragon, I would be doing this for nobody. If the internet didn’t exist, if people weren’t coming to my shows, I would be doing the same thing because I love it. And that’s why I view it as an optimistic thing. Because despite it being this thing that I hate, this is the greatest job in the world and I would never trade it for anything.
“Reset” is not the only song on Ends that gets into the album’s themes. So what is it about “Reset” that made you want to give it this big special treatment with 20-plus artists working on it? Why this song of all the songs on the album?
Lutsko: Initially, the video for “Run,” which we already released, was the one we were pouring all of our energy into. With “Reset,” initially, we were trying to do it as a B-side and were trying to come up with something very simple for the video. The initial concept was to get us all in a room and shoot, and every time the word “reset” was sung, we’d change wardrobes. The idea was it’ll just be a one-take thing, but we’ll shoot it a bunch of different times in different clothes. My band used to dress up in puppet costumes, so we were going to shoot one take like that. Then one in red dresses, or Gremlins, or Halloween characters, or tuxedos. Just pull different elements from different videos and kind of plug it in. We were going down that road.
With my past records, the non-comedy stuff, I’ve always really tried to go all out with the music videos because I have close friends that know what they’re doing and can help out. And they are willing to do it for very little money. So we just love really throwing everything at the wall and going all out.
Lutsko: :laughs: Thanks. But the idea was to try to do it for as many songs as we could for this record. So I did this post on Instagram, my first post back after I went dark on social media for a while. And basically, I said, “If you’re a filmmaker, if you’re an editor, if you’re an actor or actress, or you make puppets or you do animation, hit me up. Let’s figure out a way to work together.” And I got an obscene amount of animators reach out, and this video just happens to be 20 of the best of the people that reached out.
Luckily, Nayt Cochran, a creative director at the animation studio Hey Neighbor Studio, was incredible because I don’t know anything about animation. So when I had all these animators reach out immediately, it was like, “Okay, this could actually be a much cooler version of that idea we had for “Reset.” Every time the word reset is said it could be a different style of animation. Then when I talked to Nayt, he said because the song doesn’t really sing the word “reset” consistently, rather than having these animators animate 30 plus seconds of animation, have everyone do five-second chunks.
And he said, “If someone comes and they kill the first five seconds and they do it in a timely fashion, we give ’em another one.” So that’s kind of how that started. And he basically had me sit down with that in mind and think about what I would like the journey of this song to look like. In a kind of stream of consciousness, I wrote it all out in an hour. It starts in a pseudo version of the “Run” video, and then it goes into the “Spineless” video, and then the Webby thing happens. Every single thing that I wrote down, it was very vague, just one or two sentences. We told every artist “embellish as you see fit.” And if whatever’s written here doesn’t speak to you, just do what you want.
The big thing was sharing early work-in-progress sketches on Discord. If someone knew that their segment was first and another person knew that theirs was coming right after it, the big thing to figure out was, “This one needs to end in a place where this one can pick up.” As long as we were able to figure out those transitions all the way down the line, it just made it a really intuitive process and, for me, a very simple process. I didn’t have to do any work on this one. But the scale of this was insane.
The goal was not initially for it to be this massive thing and it just kind of accidentally became that. And I’m just blown away by the end result and very humbled. I kept saying very early on that I don’t feel like it is statistically possible to have this many incredible, incredibly talented fans who are willing to work on something like this as a genuine labor of love. No one was getting rich off this project.
That post asking for artists came after a six-month hiatus from social media, right?
Lutsko: Yeah, exactly. And I’d written pretty much the entire album at that point. From then on, we just mixed and tracked, adding my mate stuff.
On this album, you talk about this pressure to keep coming up with something new, and you’ve said how you got burnt out, but you blew up in large part because of social media. So during those six months when you’re away from it, do you start to worry people are just going to kind of forget about you? That you might lose your moment or anything like that?
Lutsko: I mean, that’s the great irony of this record, that so many songs are about that. And then when I get back in, I’m reminded, “Oh, I gotta do all this again. I got to somehow grab people’s attention with the backdrop of everything that’s happening in the world right now.”
I don’t like trying to make myself the center of attention, especially with this music, which really doesn’t have a lot to do with what’s happening right now. So yeah, everything kind of feels like pissing into the wind, and that’s why I just have to be content with creating this stuff. I am proud of this record, and I got to be okay with that regardless of how it does.
It’s undeniable the comedy stuff does better. And I could name half a dozen factors. I went away for a year. The world is very different. From my perspective, I feel like all the algorithms are severely broken, and people just genuinely aren’t seeing [my work]. And even if they are seeing it, it’s not what they subscribe to me for. All my algorithms are broken because I feel like they want to put you in a box. I’m doing comedy stuff and non-comedy stuff, an hour-long variety shows, political stuff, and Halloween stuff. It’s really hard to pin me down.
And I love that, but just to clarify, when I was doing the comedy stuff, I was really dying to get back and do some of this type of work that I did on Ends. And there’s a part of me that had a fear that when I started doing this again that it would be like scales falling from my eyes. I’d be like, “How have I been neglecting this? I don’t know how I went down this other road.” But really, I can’t wait to get back to doing comedic stuff. I’m not me without either part. (Note: He has also released plenty of new comedy songs and videos since returning from his hiatus.)
And I think it is frustrating for some fans. Obviously, there’s a great amount of people who love it all, and that’s great for me, but I can’t blame other folks who maybe are more into one thing than another. I just hope those people can be patient that I get some of the stuff out of my system before I move on to something else.
When you put out the call for animators, and you got this overwhelming response, what was your reaction personally, not even professionally?
Lutsko: I was blown away. I know I said it, but I told the people I was working with, “I don’t feel like this is statistically possible that this many talented people are fans of mine.” I dunno. Maybe that’s just dumb. I don’t know if there’s a DIY-quality to the work that I do that attracts artists, and not just animators, either.
We talked a little bit about social media, and that’s how I first became aware of your work. Social media has dramatically changed since that time. You’ve talked about the algorithms being screwed up, but what’s been the tangible result of the fall of Twitter for you?
Lutsko: It is insanely frustrating because Twitter was my home base. That’s where I had most of my followers. That’s where I had the most success. And a lot of that came from, and I’ll always pay my respects and won’t fail to mention, that I did unsolicited work for Tim Heidecker, and he had my back and hired me to do some work for the Tim and Eric Tour. Right around that time is when I started Songs on the Computer. So we were just in conversation with each other, and it was just kind of a matter of fact, “Hey, this is what I’m working on.” Then he’d retweet it, and he’s a god in comedy. Anyone who likes comedy follows him, and that would make other huge accounts retweet or follow me. And all those people left Twitter, understandably.
But that was the great thing about Twitter. You could organically build something in that way that you can’t really on YouTube or Instagram or whatever. So yeah, that definitely chopped my legs a little bit.
If you can think of something that sounds smarter than “chop my legs,” I know that’s not a saying.
What did exodus from Twitter mean for the success of your three Bandcamp vinyl campaigns?
Lutsko: I did three, and each one was a little bit worse than the one before. But I anticipated each one was going to be a big fall, and none of them were. I sold around a thousand copies for each, with a standard deviation of 200 maybe. The thing that’s great is I’ve really fostered a community of diehards. This album, Ends, is going to come out this summer. But right now, it’s exclusively available to purchase on my Patreon.
The Patreon has almost doubled within the last couple of months since I released that. So that’s the other end of the sword here that is actually really great. Now I’m doing a kind of direct-to-the-audience thing, and not just because I posted something on one of my social media accounts. I don’t even know if people are seeing those posts. People are always telling me that they don’t see it.
So the Patreon has been this great thing. I’m financially doing better than I was probably five years ago, but it’s because I’ve always worn many hats. I’ll do my vinyl campaigns. I’ll do my Patreon. I get money from streaming. I do commercial work. And I do work for film and television. So things are great, but it’s very hard to navigate moving forward, especially if I’m trying to reach new people. Because I do have this really great cult following, but you always want to make the tent bigger. And that’s the thing that’s just seems really tricky.
We talked about how part of this album is about the creative process, pushing yourself, reinventing yourself, and not resting on your laurels. But there’s the other part you talked about. You told me this before that the day Spirit Halloween reached out to you to write a second song was the same day you found out your wife was pregnant.
Lutsko: Yes.
So you were blowing up, and all of this has been going on for you while you became a dad. You mentioned that half of this album is about that, so how has becoming a father influenced everything you’re doing creatively?
Lutsko: In a very big way.
…I got to really think about how to say this. I don’t want to be overly…I dunno if “sentimental” is the right word, but it just puts things into perspective that a lot of other stuff doesn’t really matter. That this is the priority.
Swords, even though that was like five years ago, I consider Ends to be follow-up to even if it’s not very similar. But with Swords I wrote most of the songs in 2017-2018, right in the middle of the first Trump term. And the album was really about my total bewilderment that people are into this. So there were a lot of Chicken Little themes of, “I feel like the sky is falling, but no one else is acting like that.” Every song kind of dealt with a different facet of those times. It was all very external. I wasn’t really looking inward so much.
This record is the inverse of that. All of that is still happening, but there is a sense of calm. Everything was falling down, and nobody seemed to care, but while that hasn’t changed, it seems everything is actually significantly worse. When I was writing this record, it was looming. The election was gearing up. So all those fears were all there, but there’s this sense of, “You know what? I’m not going to let these people rob me of happiness, and I’m going to pour all of myself into my family and create my own happiness.” Hopefully, that makes sense.
I have to ask about one specific song on Ends that kind of stopped me in my tracks, “Hold You.” The music is gorgeous, but I couldn’t get through the lyrics. You and I became dads at the same time. I can’t even look at photos of my son when he was younger without getting emotional, and this beautiful piano ballad of yours is about that. So I’m curious how you were able to express an idea I find very difficult idea to even think about.
Lutsko: Three of the songs on Ends are about my daughter. I wrote them about my daughter. And the first one I wrote, “Show You,” I wrote during the first year of her life. The second one is, “Hi Baby.” Then “Hold You” is the most recent one that I wrote probably April of last year.
So two years ago, I write “Hi Baby,” and it’s super simple. I don’t really feel like there’s a lot of deep meaning. It’s just kind of a simple, silly song. And it came from my daughter, who would not stop saying, “Hi, baby.” She just said it all the time. Literally, she said it to strangers in the store. She’d be crying in the middle of the night. I’d go into her room, and she’d say, “Hi, baby.” First thing in the morning when she wakes up, “Hi, baby.” All the time. All the time, all the time, all the time.
I write “Hi Baby” and “Obituary” in like early 2023, late 2022. It’s before I decide I’m going offline and focusing on writing this record. So those are kind of on the shelf. And when I come back to writing this record full-time, I’m just kind of taking inventory of what I already have. Around April of last year, I listened to “Hi Baby,” and I just had this overwhelming feeling of sadness. “Oh man, she hasn’t said ‘hi baby’ in probably, I don’t know, eight months.” If I hadn’t written a song, I might’ve forgotten that she did that all the time. And it’s just this feeling of like….yeah, I mean, it’s hard to put into words. I feel like you know exactly what I’m talking about.
This is why I wanted to know! How did you put it into a song? It is a very hard thing to talk about. It’s really hard.
Lutsko: It’s like there’s this kid you love more than anything, and you always will, but it is. It’s hard. You look at old videos and you look at old pictures like, “Oh, that’s a different person. And I didn’t even realize that she had moved from point A to point B.”
So it was trying to put those feelings into a song with the added affirmation for her, first and foremost, that no matter what, some things will never change. :he pauses: You can listen to the song….I don’t need to….
At this point, the very funny, surrealist man I first learned about, thanks to his absurd Spirit Halloween theme, took out his acoustic guitar and played the alternate original version of “Hold You” for me. He describes it as a more “alt country upbeat” take. It was just as beautiful and overwhelmed me just the same as the album version. Nick Lutsko says someday he’ll release that version as well, but you can hear that rendition and get a sneak peek at the song from this video of him and his band playing it live.
Okay, so what’s next?
Lutsko: “Reset” is coming out this month. The goal has always been to do a slow trickle. The album is available on Patreon for whoever wants it. But I’m doing a new video and a new single every month. I started in December. This is the fourth single. I’m hoping to do another four more. But it’s hard, man. It’s really hard. And people don’t appear to be super into it. The people that are on the Patreon love it, which is fantastic. But the whole goal of releasing one song at a time is to try to reach more people. I’m trying to give as many songs their moment in their shot.
We’re going to do that for a few more months. And then we’re going to release the full album publicly this summer. Then, I’m becoming a dad again. My wife is pregnant and the baby’s due in August. So, I’m going to focus on being a dad for a bit. Who knows what goes from there?
I will say Swords took years for people to really catch on. So I’m very content. I feel good about this stuff. I’m proud to put it out in the world and then move on to whatever’s next.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. His son’s favorite Nick Lutsko song is “Joker.” You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
“Reset” Song Credits
Written and performed by Nick Lutsko
Saxophones by Jon Elliott
Violins by Nick Hoy & Metiney Suwanawongse
Cello by Ben VanWinkle
Drums and Mixing by Adam Brown
Mastered by Charles Allison
“Reset” Music Video Credits
Animated by (with video timestamps):
Dieter Theuns – 0:13, 1:09, 2:08, 3:54
Jack Sherry + Zain Awais – 0:24, 1:36, 3:37, 3:46, 3:56
Richard Stevenson – 0:30, 2:06, 3:52, 3:54
Nath Milburn – 0:35, 1:28, 3:07, 3:36, 3:45, 3:47
Dan Cupps – 0:44, 3:18, 3:39
Dann Beeson – 1:05, 3:00, 3:38, 3:40, 3:50
Nayt Cochran – 1:13, 2:57, 3:24, 3:29, 3:44
Mel McBee – 1:16, 1:46, 3:34, 3:47
Noah Campagna – 1:41, 2:14, 3:54
Esteban Martinez – 1:52, 2:11, 3:35, 3:49
Emilee Beeson – 1:57 (illustrated by Emilee Beeson, animated by Dann Beeson)
Kacper Korzybski – 2:00, 2:58, 3:31, 3:42, 3:51
Mike Patten – Storyboards – 1:57 – 2:19, Animation 2:03
Brielle Garcia – 2:48, 3:48
Justin White 3:11, 3:20, 3:26, 3:53
Tim Farrell – 3:38, 3:49, 3:51, 3:52
Brad Young – 3:41
Stephen van Wyk – 3:51